1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a robot apparatus capable of moving autonomously and a method of controlling the motion thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a robot apparatus capable of moving autonomously, conforming to a motion of an external moving subject that may typically be as a user of the robot apparatus and also to a method of controlling the motion thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mechanical apparatus that is electrically or magnetically driven to move and act like a man (living thing) is called a “robot”. In Japan, robots became popular in the late 1960s but many of them are industrial robots such as manipulators and carrier robots designed to realize unmanned automated production lines in factories.
Recently, developments of utility robots that can operate as men's partners to support human activities in various different scenes in living environments of human being are under way. Unlike industrial robots, such utility robots are provided with the ability of learning by themselves a number of techniques necessary to adapt themselves to different people with different personalities in various scenes of living environments of human being and also to various environments. For example, “pet type” robots designed by imitating the physical mechanism and motions of tetrapodal animals such as dogs and cats and “humanoid” robots designed by imitating the physical mechanism and motions of men who are creatures of erect bipedalism are being put to practical use. Unlike industrial robots, such robot apparatus can move in various different ways because of their entertaining capabilities and hence they are also sometimes referred to as entertainment robots.
One of the most important themes in the technological development of such entertainment robots is the necessity of pursuing a scheme that can keep the user away from being bored. However, since boringness to men has not been elucidated yet, it is obviously difficult to prepare a scheme that can keep the user away from being bored. Therefore, techniques for preparing many schemes for attracting the user's interest are being devised and employed currently.
Schemes for making a robot apparatus to move, conforming to the voice and the motion of the user have been proposed (see, inter alia, Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-246174 and Non-Patent Document 1: Masato Ito, Jun Tani, “On-line Imitative Interaction with a Humanoid Robot Using a Mirror Neuron Model”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2004, in press).